Due to the high cost of erecting and maintaining permanent silas for the storage and fermentation of grains, cereals etc., alternate silage storage methods have been devised.
One of the newest, least expensive and most practical alternatives to a permanent silo structure, involves the use of an elongated tubular plastic bag, into which silage is fed and stored for fermentation. These bags are normally over 100 feet in length, and are intended to be filled in the fields, and left on the ground while the silage ferments.
While this system does not require permanent structures to be erected for storage, and prevents field losses, with resultant increases in available feed and nutrition per acre, it does present some inherent problems associated with its employment.
The major obstacle presented by this system is how to remove the silage from the bag to feed the livestock, in a quick, efficient, practical manner. At the present time most farmers simply open one end of the bag, and use a front end loader to remove the contents; or they place a grate over the open end, and allow the livestock to feed directly from the bag.
With respect to patented devices directed to a solution of this problem, the most pertinant appears to be U.S. Pat. No. 4,243,346 and German Pat. No. 2,225,783. The U.S. patent shows an unloading implement for horizontal silos which is driven by a power take-off from a tractor, having vertical fingered tools which move, both up and down, and towards and away from, the body of the silage; to engage it and pass it downwardly to a conveyor. The German patent shows what appears to be a silage unloader having rotary cutters, which are moveable vertically to cut the silage up. In addition the German patent is referred to and described to some extent in U.S. Pat. No. 2,225,783, but is not considered as pertinent as the U.S. patent.
While these prior art devices are adequate for their intended purpose, they are still dificient in many respects. The most glaring deficiency being that they do not provide for disposal of the horizontal silo either concurrantly with, or subsequent to, unloading of its contents. Furthermore, the flailing action of the unloading mechanism they disclose, will tend to shred the plastic material, which will be mixed in with the silage, and ingested by the livestock, with dire consequences for both the animals and the owner. Other defects apparent in these devices are that the unloading mechanisms are not particularly efficient and cannot extract the entire contents of the silage bags except under the most ideal of conditions. They also do not have any provisions to immobilize the bags during unloading, nor do they provide any positive means to force the contents of the bag, in a direction relative to the unloading means, to promote discharge of the contents.
To date no one has devised a horizontal silage unloading device, which has successfully addressed all of the aforementioned problems and deficiencies, until the conception of the device which forms the basis of this invention.